UML Help required...PLEASE!!!!
 

Folks,

I need a learn how to read UML diagrams etc, in order to produce web screens from them. I am fine with Uses Cases etc but don't quite get all the UMLstuff. Is there either a good book that I can read or any on-line tutorials that I can take. I have been recommended " UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language (2nd Edition)". Any other ideas folks???

I have about 3-4 weeks to get up to speed before my new contract starts.

thanks

Bing

First thing to remember is that UML is nothing but a set of diagrammatic tools to represent system requirements and design. It is not some holy grail of being able to write a complete system by drawing a few pictures. Although you can extract information from some UML models into a source code framework - depends on what you want to do really. Based on what you say some bits of UML will be more relevant than others. For example, Activity Diagrams may be useful for understanding the flow of the web screens or frontend.

The art form is how to make use of what UML offers to express your thinking/creativity, etc.

It has a steep learning curve if you don't know the modelling theory and just want to be pragmatic because you can use it in so many ways (and its not easy to understand whther you're using UML in the right way or wrong way). Anyway, with that in mind have a look at the following sites

A simple reference card for UML
http://www.holub.com/goodies/uml/index.html

A good intro to UML
http://www.ajug.org/info/tech/uml/uml.html

A UML Glossary - if you want to know what something means
http://softdocwiz.com/UML.htm

A nice UML Design Tutorial (n ot really web system based - but does show how UML is used in the real world)
http://www.objectmentor.com/resource...UML_Design.pdf

Open Source Modelling Tool you can actually use
http://argouml.tigris.org/

Have a look at the above and see what kind of UML diagrams (class diagrams, activity diagrams, etc) would be helpful in defining/designing your application and make sure you can understand them. Then have a look at the tools available to see which ones can take information from the UML model and get you going on writing the screens, workflow or code.